May 5, 2014

This is going to happen: sooner or later, some CEO or sports team owner or similar is going to get ousted because he or she supports a woman’s right to an abortion, or the cause of Palestinian statehood, or opposes the death penalty. It’s inevitable. I can easily see someone suggesting that, say, Israel is an apartheid state, and watching as the media whips itself into a frenzy. And when that happens, the notion that there is no such thing as a violation of free speech that isn’t the government literally sending men with guns to arrest you will be just as powerful, and powerfully destructive, as it is now. So what will these people say? I don’t have the slightest idea how they will be able to defend the right of people to hold controversial, left-wing political ideas when they have come up with a thousand arguments for why the right to free expression doesn’t apply in any actual existing case. How will Isquith write a piece defending a CEO’s right to oppose Israeli apartheid? A sports owner’s right to do the same? I can’t see how he could– unless it really is just all about teams, and not about principle at all.

To follow up on Sarah’s link to this post earlier, the left’s PC round-up of the last few years will quickly be forgotten once there’s a Republican in the White House — and in any case, all attempts at ousting someone for his leftwing views are easily explained away by those 60 year old catch-all words: McCarthyism and Blacklisting.

The what if the same thing happens to you argument will never work with leftists. They are capable of complete amnesia, and so will completely forget that they had previously argued for the oppression that they may in the future have to endure. Also, they never beleive in any universal constitutional freedoms or protections anyway. Basically leftists only beleive in freedoms for other leftists, everybody else does not matter. So they are capable of recognizing erosion of rights, and loss of constitutional protections, only if they are the victims.

Funny that McCarthy is coming up. Anyone remember the history of this? Liberals during and after WW2 used the same institutions and tactics to track down and blacklist "nazi sympathizers". Many actually DID sympathize with the nazis, in fact. And many did not and were just convenient political targets.

Ten years later, McCarthy does the exact same thing to go after communists. (And there were far more communists and soviet agents in the US by this point.) Now, suddenly, the rules have changed and he's the Worst Man in History. In fact, his charges are so crazy and illegitimate that to this day left-wing historians refuse to study leaked Soviet archives which prove that, indeed, it was even worse than most people thought.

The point is that the Left, to the extent that they care at all about double standards, considers it a mark of their brilliance and our stupidity that we care about preserving institutions and standards of political behavior and are willing to forgo political advantage to preserve them. The more thoughtful of them who DO worry about hypocrisy assume that the fact that they're right and we're evil justifies abandoning some scruples. This latter, more fairminded group, given a sufficient wake-up call, eventually turns into the Roger Simons and Andrew Breitbarts of the world.

I disagree. They will have no trouble at all. And its not just "hypocrisy." It's the way totalitarians think and act. As Orwell described it, embracing two entirely contradictory ideas at the same time is not only possible but an essential part of being a True Party Member.

Or as the old Communists with a capital C would have put it, it's naive "bourgious democracy" to suppose that "fascists," "reactionaries" and "counter-revolutionaries" should have any rights because they are on the wrong side of history. Ultimately, they will face revolutionary justice.

George Orwell, in "Literature and Totalitarianism" (21 May, 1941) described the mental thought process the Left will go through if the tables are ever turned. A Leftist is taught to believe unquestioningly that which must be believed Right Now in order to achieve the goal. Today's belief and tomorrow's may be contradictory but that's not viewed as a problem. Find it and read it... very thought provoking.

This is not an effective argument, if one is directing it towards lefties. They understand very well that if they don't win, they will be destroyed or utterly rejected. That's why they're berserkers. From their point of view, what happens if and when they're defeated and in the minority doesn't matter, because that would be Ultimate Catastrophe. This is like appealing to Hitler to stop the Second World War before Germany was reduced to centimeter-sized shards and everyone dead. Who thinks that would be an effective argument?

Therefore, Carl:1. Let's argue with the left with the full awareness that we will persuade very few lefties but as long as we keep arguing we will have the opportunity to persuade people who are not committed lefties who can be persuaded as long as they hear our side--we must not concede the public debate by being silent.2. Let's pound home, repeatedly and endlessly, how the left is totalitarian to its core, that it always wants *more* power, that it cannot rest, that it always wants to seize more of other people's rights and property.

Freddie is right but doesn't get why this is. It's simply the triumph of the Marcusian neo-left; bad manners to beat a bad system, man. These are the children of the leftist part of the baby boom; what did we expect? It's a bit late to be concerned about the death of civil society when the leftist theorists and the regulatory state have done everything in their power to crush it.

Freddie should celebrate the win. The taking off of gloves in discourse - and the right's willingness to join the left in doing so (see e.g. Ann Coulter) is a huge win for the left. An important social instituion - manners - along with what had become a thorn in the side to the left - free speech - are both dead.

Silly Freddie... that free speech cr@pola was just an expedient argument to use against the institutions. We don't need it any longer, so ditch the idea of allowing people to have opinions. The time for opinions is gone; do you support Big Brother or not? It's the dialectic, man... don't you see that?

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